[News] Finnish Free/Open Source Conference, Buy4Commons Introduced

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Open Source Conference: notes from OpenMind

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| The 5th Openmind conference organized by COSS - the Finnish Centre for Open
| Source Solutions - provided some interesting discussions about how companies,
| governments and individuals across Northern-Europe are using open source.
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| I think this would be a fantastic service for the commons, and I hope someone
| steps up to provide it. It’s obviously a viable business plan, even if only
| private licenses are sold, but the Buy4Commons option would make the project
| into more than that: a true public service.
|
| The time to step up is now, when the CC+ initiative itself is just catching
| on, and before any preconceptions about the service have been formed in the
| minds of artists or content hosting services.
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| In particular, they found that 75% of responding firms use open source
| software in some way. This figure is up from approximately 13% in the year
| 2000, which is a major increase in just a few years
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| Ubuntu Finland receives award from Finland's Minister of Communications
|
| Ubuntu Finland[1] was awarded Finnish Linux User Group's 2008 award at the HP
| Linux Forum[2], in Helsinki, on 8th of May. The award was received by the
| team contact of Ubuntu Finland, Timo Jyrinki, and was given by the Finland's
| Minister of Communications, Suvi Lindén[3]. The award also included 2000€ in
| cash for Ubuntu Finland's usage.
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| Mikko Alkio, the new State Secretary at the Ministry of Employment and the
| Economy, who had previously served as aide to Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen
| (Centre), was a key instigator of a donation from Microsoft of computer
| software to Finnish schools.
| Alkio was still working as manager for information society relations at
| Microsoft a couple of weeks ago when Prime Minister Vanhanen visited the
| United States.
| During his US visit, Vanhanen met with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates,
| who promised Finnish schools a free package of the Windows Live@edu
| service platform.
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| Mozilla Firefox continued its slow but steady march against the worldwide
| dominance of Microsoft Internet Explorer in 2007. Though the open-source web
| browser continues to sit firmly in second place behind IE, where it's been
| for years, usage of Firefox is still on the rise. The browser is even
| threatening to tip the scales in some European countries -- most likely
| thanks to the rapid internationalization efforts made possible by the
| open-source development model.
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| The initiative was confirmed during the Norwegian IT-minister Heidi
| Grande Roys' visit in Finland. The leader of COSS, Petri Rasanen,
| stated that the steady operation of COSS is a good base to build
| the international collaboration on, and for example the web site
| of the new center will be based on the COSS portal.
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| Ubuntu Finland has sent Ubuntu CDs and information about Ubuntu, Linux and
| free (as in freedom) software to each parliament representative of Finland in
| the beginning of September.
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| Ministry of Justice of Finland has made the decision to adopt the Open
| Source OpenOffice.org suite as its office software from beginning of 2007.
| Ministry of Justice and its branch of administration will also adopt
| OpenDocument Format standard as the file format for its documents.
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| In a bid to get more open source exposure inside the Finish (sic)
| establishment, Tekes (the Funding Agency for Technology and
| Innovation of the Finnish government) launched a national
| development programme for open source business. Programme is carried
| out by COSS, the Finnish Centre for Open Source Software.
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